Stage Of Development example essay topic

I was born on November 22, 1980 at approximately 2: 18 a. m., in Richmond Hill Ontario. My birth weight was 8 lbs. 7 oz. and I was 14 in. long. My mother was thirteen days overdue with me. As I grew older I seemed to develop at a normal pace. Crawling at eight months, walking at thirteen months and talking fluently at 32 months " What's out of sight, is out of mind".

(Myers, D.G. 2000). This one of Piaget's theories for the sensorimotor stage. It was definitely part of my development between the ages of birth and two years, but this was only for a very brief time when I was very young. I feel that object permanence, the awareness that things exist even when not visible, is part of a child's early years and that it's an important milestone with age development. It shows the beginning of a child's mind learning to problem solve and think. Object permanence, in my opinion, only applies to young children.

I feel that after the age of 8 months it no longer affects them. Another developmental phenomena as proposed by Piaget is stranger anxiety. When I was young I never suffered from stranger anxiety, according to my mother, I would walk right up to strangers like I new them my whole life. I see some similarities in my life now. I make friends fairly easy and not many people intimidate me, as far as being shy goes.

Stranger anxiety seems to very common among children, I think that infants that are kept in the home around the same familiar faces suffer from it more than those who play with the neighbors kids and are always visiting different people. Erickson had a whole different way of writing the developmental stages for infants. "If needs are dependably met, infants develop a sense of basic trust". (Myers, D.G. 2000). This to me is the same idea with Piaget's theory of stranger anxiety.

By developing trust and mistrust comes to be why infants would be afraid of strangers. If a stranger does something different to a child that they don't recognize and don't like, I feel that they will remember the incident and become more and more weary of strangers as more incidents happen. A strange story that comes into play with my life happened when I was a little older. I was about ten years old and home from school sick. At about ten o'clock in the morning my mom left to go to the grocery store and left me at the house. I was down the basement playing Nintendo when I heard heavy boots walking upstairs.

Well I went up the stairs to investigate, as I peaked around the corner I discovered a man wearing all black with a ski mask on in my house. He spotted me at the same time, and we both ran for the door, him out the back and me out the side. I ran across the street to the neighbors who called the police. It didn't have much effect on me, but it did make me weary of people wearing black ski masks, even to this day I hate seeing people wear them. Not necessarily stranger anxiety but I think it relates. Erickson also said "Toddlers learn to exercise will and do things for themselves, or they doubt their abilities".

(Myers D.G. 2000). I don't agree with this statement very much, because children learning how to do things on their own is part of growing up. Being successful and failing, either way helps a child grow. When I was at this young age my mother said that I got bored and frustrated very easily. I feel that children get frustrated very easily with things they can't figure out and that it is stressful to them. Failing, I don't believe makes a child doubt their abilities one little bit.

Their minds aren't capable of realizing self-esteem issues and they forget about it in a minute or so. The next stage in Piaget's theory is the pre operational stage. It applies to children between the ages of about 2 to 6 years. He said that children begin "Representing things with words and images but lacking logical reasoning". (Myers, D.G. 2000). As far as associating things with words, this was true for me at much younger age.

I began to associate things with words between the ages of 14 mo. and two years, when my language really began to pick-up. As I stated earlier I was speaking fluently at 32 mo. which is very early into the pre operational stage. By this statement, I think he was into an older range of children. He also mentioned that "A child lacks the concept of conservation - the principle that quantity remains the same despite changes in shape".

(Myers, D.G. 2000). I agree with this statement 100 percent. I can remember a very specific incident with my little brother when we were both very young. We were playing hockey in the basement and he was the goalie. He asked me not to shoot it hard, so I lightly flipped the ball into the air so it was bouncing towards him. He immediately ran up stairs crying saying I was shooting the ball to hard.

Yet in all reality the ball was barely moving towards him. Egocentrism, not being able to see things from another's point of view, is another thing all kids experience. I have a 22-month-old daughter, who displays it all the time. One of her favorite games is to cover her face, so we can't see her.

My wife and I play along, calling her name and looking for her. It's an interesting thing to see. I don't believe that children are the only sufferers' though. I've seen adults display similar behavior several different times. Erickson theory of initiative vs. guilt, "Preschoolers learn to initiate tasks and carry out plans, or they feel guilty about efforts to be independent". (Myers, D.G. 2000).

When talking to my family I came to the conclusion that from the experience I've had around little kids and from what I was told about myself is that this statement is ridiculous. I don't think preschoolers feel guilt about things unless they are put down. If they do something wrong and they know its wrong I don't think that there mind process' fast enough for them to feel it. Now if you point it out to them and ask them why they did it and make them feel guilty for it then they do.

They are innocent children who know what's right and wrong and intentionally do things wrong, but I don't think they feel guilt about it. The only reason they know that its wrong is because they " ve been told not to do it and it's not common place to do it. They don't do things to hurt other people; therefore, I don't think they can't feel guilt about it. Following the pre operational stage in Piaget's table is the concrete operational stage. "Thinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations". (Myers, D.G. 2000).

When children enter this stage of development I think it's very noticeable, because they feel good about themselves. There are so many more things they can figure out then they ever used to before. Learning to understand so many things outside of school. I remember when I understood that if you threw a basketball at the backboard it would angle into the hoop. I used this knowledge for playing hockey.

I would shoot the puck off the boards on one side of a person and then go around them on the other side. What Piaget said ties in very tightly with what Erikson said "Children learn the pleasure of applying themselves to tasks, or they feel inferior". (Myers, D.G. 2000). That is a great way of putting it. I remember in school how the whole class would race to see who could get things done first and compete over who could get the better grade.

We learned to do new things and think in new ways. The next stage Piaget isolated is the formal operational stage. The development of abstract reasoning. "As children approach adolescence many become capable of solving hypothetical propositions deducing consequences". (Myers, D.G. 2000). This statement is very vague.

People's minds' developing is part of life, but many things can vary the speed. I know from going to school in the suburbs that people in my school were generally more educated then people in an inner city school. Now the reason, I'm not sure, if there is actually only one reason. I feel it's a combination of reasons ranging from bad teachers, to bad neighborhoods, to bad upbringings. Now I'm not saying that all people who go to inner schools are not as well educated as kids from the suburbs, but it's a problem that's got national attention. This better education I feel helps people to reach this kind of thinking sooner.

The same thing happens with children from other countries, which have different educational systems, might reach this stage earlier, or later than in the children in the US. It works other ways though; with being in the USAF you meet many different people. I can tell you that I've met people who I feel had much less of a concept on how abstract thinking takes place. They " re amazed at simple solutions to problems and how you could come up with conclusions to them. So that brings up a whole other point. With Piaget's statement about this stage being the entrance into abstract reasoning, I agree in the sense that it is the entrance into deep abstract reasoning where everybody's mind begins to process information in a different manner.

Erikson classified the years into adolescence and broke the stages down a little more. "Teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity, or they become confused about who they are". (Myers, D.G. 2000). When I was a teenager I was trying to find where I fit in. When I was in high school there were different groups, each one dressed different, acted different and most of them had a main activity they did. Jocks, skaters, eat., eat...

As an adolescent I hung out with whom I liked and I did what I liked, but I did follow the image that went along with it. I dressed a certain way and I still dress that same way now. People judge you by the clothes you wear more than anything, because it's the first thing that they see. That's how our society works. I think that development of an identity is much more of a complicated process now, then when Erikson studied it. Times have changed so much, finding an identity and becoming an individual is so much more of a trial and error process then he says it is.

The formation of an identity is one that is an ongoing process through your whole life. You don't just become something or somebody and stay that way forever. We are ever changing with everyday, certain events, such as having a baby, have a much bigger impact on what kind of person we become. We set goals of the kind of person we want to be and the image we want to portray. Overall I think that both psychologists' were on the right track with the stages of development and that I fit into both of their categories one way or another.

As people get older I think it is much harder to pinpoint things that all people feel, we are all different, we " ve all been through different things and we " ve all had different feelings. To try to sum up all peoples' lives and place them into a category, or a stage is a task that can't be achieved. Adults all develop different traits at different times. Some pick up traits that others don't. The development of an adult can't be put into a step-by-step basis. I feel their analogy of the younger stages, up to adolescence is very well put and that they did excellent analogies of a child's mind.

My developmental years went very smooth, but a child that has experienced a series of traumatizing events might be different. These things might stump their growth; cause them to achieve stages later than most. I was early to their age limits, where other might be on time and yet others might be late. I don't think that a chart has enough gray area for all the different cultures and environments around the country and world.

Bibliography

Myers, D.G. (2000). What's out of sight, is out of mind. Toddlers learn to exercise will and do things for themselves, or they doubt their abilities. Representing things with words and images but lacking logical reasoning. A child lacks the concept of conservation- the principle that quantity remains the same despite changes in shape. Preschoolers learn to initiate tasks and carryout plans, or they feel guilty about efforts to be independent. Teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity. Psychology Sixth Edition. p. 128,130,149.